The fog is alive: Researchers discover bacteria in fog droplets clear toxins from air (opens in new tab)

What if fog isn’t just misty air, but a living ecosystem?This question hung over cloud researcher Thi Thuong Thuong Cao. As a PhD student at Arizona State University, her curiosity led her from knocking on the doors of microbiologists and chemists, to sampling fog before sunrise in Pennsylvania, to hours of peering through a lab’s microscope. And she found her answer.Her ASU research team found that bacteria floating in tiny fog droplets are alive, growing and — quite helpfully — breaking dow...